Joel Wit is a Visiting Scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS and a Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University Weatherhead Institute for East Asian Studies.
Three veteran analysts sit down with Aaron David Miller to discuss the complicated relationship between the United States and North Korea.
The United States and North Korea are once again locked in a diplomatic standoff over denuclearization and the normalization of U.S.-North Korean relations. This has brought the promising start North and South Korea have made on building peace and security on the Korean Peninsula to a halt.
President Trump’s only realistic option for stopping North Korea’s nuclear march is reinvigorated diplomacy, followed by significantly ratcheting up the pressure if it fails.
The likelihood of North Korean nuclear and missile tests over the next six months is fairly high if the Trump administration continues the Obama administration’s unsuccessful approach of “strategic patience.”
2013 witnessed new levels of threatening behavior from North Korea and recent perturbations among the North Korean leadership also raise the possibility of greater instability and unpredictability. What will 2014 bring in terms of North Korean nuclear behavior?
